How Akool Grew from $100K to $25M Revenue Selling AI Video Tools (Interview with Founder and CEO Jeff Lu)

Highlights and Introducing Jeff Lu of Akool

Jeff Lu

00:00I left Google Cloud in 2022. I have been working on the generative AI for images and videos. I decided to full time quit a job at Google and start a company.

Nathan Latka

00:14So how many videos are you... Are your users altogether free and paid creating per day on Akool today?

Jeff Lu

00:20About 500,000, I would say, per day. Images, videos, and all the assets. For 2025, our, recognized revenue is about $25,000,000, and, we are, more than double this year.

Nathan Latka

00:36Hey, folks. My guest today is Jeff Lu. He's the Founder and CEO of Akool, a generative AI video platform for avatars, video translation, and real time video. He's an AI and computer vision veteran with over ten years of experience in this space, having previously worked at Microsoft, Apple, specifically on Face ID, and Google Cloud. Jeff, you ready to take us to the top?

Jeff Lu

00:57Yeah. Thank you for inviting me here today.

Why Jeff Left Google Cloud to Start Akool

Nathan Latka

00:59You bet. Okay. What year did you leave Google Cloud or Apple to launch Akool?

Jeff Lu

01:03So I left Google Cloud in 2022 to launch Akool. So it's kind of at the beginning of this generative AI wave.

Nathan Latka

01:13And what were you

01:15seeing at Google Cloud at the time that sort of gave you the idea for this? What was the initial product you launched?

Jeff Lu

01:20I have been working on the generative AI for images and videos for a pretty long time. And what we see is that their technology is becoming mature. At that time, Google is pretty conservative on generative AI, especially on videos and so on. They think they cannot control the results, and they want everything to be 100% under control. So I decided to full time quit a job at Google and start a company. But before, I was kind

01:52of part time, worked a little bit, and it's during the COVID and so on. Yeah.

Product Demo: Face Swap, Avatars, and Agentic Canvas

Nathan Latka

01:57There's so many people building AI tools. They say it's the best. I asked you ahead of time. Prepare a screen so you can share and show us the product. Show us what you're building.

Jeff Lu

02:05So the thing that we initially got popular is the swap features. So we have a whole swap series. You can swap the face, swap the character in the video, swap the motions, swap the head, and then swap the hair, and so on. Then we get our avatar features, very popular, especially around the... On the B2B side, our most popular feature is actually avatars. And you can create static avatars, and you can create live interaction

02:38avatars, you can create your own version of the avatars, and so on. This is the most popular feature on the B2B side. The foundation models, which we do some fine tunes, are also very popular. And more recently, we launched something called Agentic Canvas, and it's a new feature, and I think it's also getting popular. Basically, can use AI agents to help you to create a long format of the videos, And you can just type and it

03:12will create the video by itself.

Building Proprietary Models Instead of Fine-Tuning

Nathan Latka

03:15My question is a lot of people are gonna go, Jeff's not doing anything special. There's a bunch of tools I can use to do a face swap. But you've actually... You're not just using other foundation models, you're actually fine tuning. Now you're a technologist. Explain to the marketer watching this why that's valuable to them, why your fine tuning adds value to their life.

Jeff Lu

03:34Yeah. Yeah. For the swap series of the models, we're actually not just fine tuning. We are designing the model from scratch and doing the models ourselves. So it's a pretty different model architecture and training data size and so on. So the result quality and how it handles the corner cases and the boundary cases are very different.

Nathan Latka

03:54Can you just educate us? When you say you're building your own foundation models, most people think you have to have billions of dollars to do that. How are you doing it?

How Akool Keeps Model Costs Under Control

Jeff Lu

04:02We are not building the largest video foundation models. We are building like video models for specific tasks. So for example, the avatar, you generate humans in the video. Human generation for only that task, and then the model is much smaller. And also we create a swap series. You make changes to humans in the videos. And the video models are much smaller than the large foundation models that generate everything. So that's how we control the cost and

04:29control the budget and make things move.

Revenue: $25M in 2025 and Over $3M in June 2026

Nathan Latka

04:31You've been pretty transparent about your revenue growth. Are you comfortable sharing what revenue is today?

Jeff Lu

04:35For 2025, our, recognized revenue is about $25,000,000, and, we are, more than double this year. So we are expecting to get, 60 or something. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:50So you anticipate finishing in December 2026 with about 60,000,000 of ARR?

Jeff Lu

04:54On revenue, not ARR.

Nathan Latka

04:56Tell me how you measure.

Jeff Lu

04:57Yeah. So revenue, you recognize the revenues and add, the trailing 12 months. So that's, how it works. And the ARR, you probably use the, last month's, multiply 12, that's, revenue run rate. So it's a different, way of measuring it. So... Yeah.

Nathan Latka

05:15Jeff, I love that about you. Right? That's the quickest way to tell if I'm interviewing a marketing founder or a technical founder. All the marketing founders take last month's revenue, multiply by 12. You're conservative. You're looking back, which I think is awesome. What does that mean in terms of we're recording this in July? If we just look at last month's revenue, how much did you do just last month?

Jeff Lu

05:34Last month's revenue, I think it's over $3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

05:37That's incredible. How... What was that like? I mean, did you ever expect when you launched this thing thing three, four years ago, you'd be doing $3,000,000 a month?

Jeff Lu

05:44It's actually pretty different when we just got started. We're trying to focus on B2B purely, and we can now get into mix of B2B and B2C and and so on. But our goal is still to bring this to a very big company. So, I think we are still on the way, going there.

Nathan Latka

06:02What does your actual tech stack look like? I mean, you have a bunch of Mac studios running in a closet or H200s somewhere? Are you renting from one of the inference providers? Like, how do you do your training?

Jeff Lu

06:11We rent servers from their, cloud providers, and then we do training on these servers. We use multiple ones, but Lambda is used a lot, and there's some others, and we all depend on the workload and the needs and so on.

Nathan Latka

06:26Since you're a user of those platforms, I'm trying to figure out who's going to win that space. Who do you think is going to win that space?

Jeff Lu

06:32I think on the infrastructure side, there will be multiple winners. It's very hard for a company to dominate, So that's how the B2B side works. And if you are doing B2C, then probably there will be a bigger player.

Nathan Latka

06:50Yeah. Other folks listening right now are trying to, like, build their own version of sort of foundation models. And I think that my audience generally, they know what a prompt in Claude is, right, or. And then they say, well, I want my prompt to have memory. So then they upload a bunch of MD files, but then they hit context window issues and hallucinations in Claude and. So then they say, maybe I should host my own files,

07:10do my own training, and then it gets really complex really, really quickly. You've obviously pushed that pretty far the other direction. Do you have do you have these same issues like context window issues and hallucination issues when you're building your own foundation models for specific use cases?

Jeff Lu

07:23In the video space, I think that is a little bit less concerned. The video space, the main thing is how to make it more realistic. Making it realistic is the biggest challenge and also make it accurate to the prompt. In our case, since we are doing more specialized video models, and we generally don't experience these issues.

Nathan Latka

07:47I published my book in 2019, 60,000 words, we sold a lot of copies, watched it on a bestseller list. How close am I to be able to use Akool to update... Upload the PDF of my book, plus maybe the audiobook, so you have my voice, plus an image or two of me, and you make it a video?

Jeff Lu

08:03That depends on what kind of video you want to make. If it's a avatar video, talking about reading the books, that's pretty simple. It's like a story and you want to see a scenery of what the book tells. I think we can already do quite many of these works piece by piece, and it should not be far to get the whole book to work. Yeah.

Getting the First 100 Customers via Communities

Nathan Latka

08:23When you launched this business back in 2022, how did you get the first 100 customers?

Jeff Lu

08:28When we first launched, we tried to close some B2B customers and some larger ones, and then the process is very slow, and there are lots of users come using it by itself. So we just put a payment gateway on it, and then people begin to pay. We get some organic traffic and people come by themselves and just pay by themselves online.

Nathan Latka

08:53But really try to remember, I mean, when you launched, you didn't have traffic. Now today, you're getting 210,000 organic clicks a month based off Ahrefs' data that I'm showing here on my screen right now. How did you get the traffic in the early days? How did people know about you?

Jeff Lu

09:07In the early days, we mainly got the from the... Get the users from the community. So quite many communities like Reddit and Facebook groups and Discord and so on. And we kind of show lots of the product demos.

Nathan Latka

09:28So I see you have your own Reddit channel, r forward slash akool underscore official. Was this the major driver of your first 100 customers or no?

Jeff Lu

09:36No. This subreddit was created much more recently.

Nathan Latka

09:40So you are just posting in random other subreddits?

Jeff Lu

09:43In related communities for showing demo, without demos and so on.

Nathan Latka

09:49I see. Okay. What else did you do to get your first 100 customers? So Reddit communities, what else?

Jeff Lu

09:53There are some user groups already using video creation tools, and we try to talk with these customers and frequently schedule, like, one on one meetings and listen what they need and recommend them tools and so on.

Nathan Latka

10:12Can you name one or two of those communities?

Jeff Lu

10:14So Fiverr had lots of their, people, using, helping others to create videos, and we also talked with the people on the Fiverr.

Nathan Latka

10:23So you told them, hey. Look. You're on Fiverr giving people video services like face swap. You should use Akool to get that work done faster.

Jeff Lu

10:32Yeah. We we did that work, as well. So we did that before.

Nathan Latka

10:35So... Did you write the first line of code in 2020? Are my notes right?

Jeff Lu

10:39Yeah. About right. 2021 or 2020 or something like that. Yeah.

Revenue From 2021 to 2023 and an Inbound Enterprise Deal

Nathan Latka

10:43Okay. What did you finish 2021 at with total revenue?

Jeff Lu

10:46It's very small. Around a 100 k or something.

Nathan Latka

10:48Okay. And in 2022, what did you finish with?

Jeff Lu

10:51Also about a 100 k.

Nathan Latka

10:53So pretty flat.

Jeff Lu

10:54Because the first first, 2021, is part time, and 2022 is I just get out. I think at that time, we are... We spend most of the time pursuing large contracts, but was not having difficulties working on the closing type of the large contracts, and it didn't grow much.

Nathan Latka

11:17And what did you finish with in 2023?

Jeff Lu

11:19$2,000,000 to $3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

11:21My notes tell me that that was your first big enterprise account. You landed Coca-Cola, and they ran a six month campaign swapping several million faces. Tell me how you closed that deal.

Jeff Lu

11:31So that's inbound, and they found us, and they they see their... Our technology the best on the market. And so they benchmarked a lot, so they decided to work with us.

Nathan Latka

11:45Did you have AEs on your team that are looking for all the prosumers that sign up for Akool for $50 a month, if you see someone at cocacola.com, you proactively reach out to them? Or how does that actually work?

Jeff Lu

11:56For this case, at that time, we don't have. And it's... Fully, they reach out to us, and they even didn't disclose their identity at the beginning until, like, from the first conversation to get engaged, it's about three months in the middle. So they spent three months benchmark testing different stuff and the designing and so on. Yeah. But we get our first AE in 2024, and then begin to do more of the sales and the management work.

12:30Well.

2024 Revenue: $12M to $13M

Nathan Latka

12:31And so what did you finish 2024 with in terms of revenue?

Jeff Lu

12:34Around the $12,000,000 to $13,000,000.

Nathan Latka

12:37You said in 2025, you finished with about 25,000,000 of revenue, and you're gonna more than double that here in 2026. Right?

Jeff Lu

12:44Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Team Size, Engineers, and Sales Reps

Nathan Latka

12:45Walk me through the team size today. How have you structured it, and how many folks are full time?

Jeff Lu

12:49Our team is pretty dynamic. It it depend on their needs and so on. So we have 60 to 70 people on board.

Nathan Latka

13:00How many are engineers? Like, 40?

Jeff Lu

13:01Yeah. Around that.

Nathan Latka

13:03Okay. And do you have any quota carrying sales reps or no?

Jeff Lu

13:06Yeah. So we have about four, five quota carrying sales reps, and it's pretty standard to give $1,000,000 quota per person.

Nathan Latka

13:16So I guess how many total customers are you serving today, and what's the average customer paying per month?

Jeff Lu

13:21On the prosumer side, we have a lot. We have tens of thousands of customers. And on the enterprise and the SMB side, have several hundred.

Nathan Latka

13:32So is it fair to say all of your paying customers added up together, you have more than 30,000 paying?

Jeff Lu

13:37I think so. Like 20,000 to 30,000, around 30,000 maybe.

Nathan Latka

13:41But most of your growth is coming from the enterprise sales?

Jeff Lu

13:44More recently.

Nathan Latka

13:45Yeah. Like how much value can you add to one enterprise account if they start off paying $50 a month? Are you comfortable... Don't share the name, but are you comfortable sharing your largest contract value today?

Largest Contract: $4M Per Year on Usage

Jeff Lu

13:55It's it's actually usage based, but they pay us, like, around, $4,000,000 a year. And

Nathan Latka

14:03What? You have individual customers paying 4,000,000 a year.

Jeff Lu

14:08No. No. No. They are contract on the B2B side.

Nathan Latka

14:10That's still pretty incredible. What what what, makes them scale so quickly? When you say usage based, is it number of credits? How do you... What value do you assign to each credit? How do they consume the credit?

Jeff Lu

14:21We we provide credits and... To the users that's using their platform and its usage based. And some of them actually integrate into their software. And when they scale up their usage, they also scale up the API calls. It's all through API usage.

Nathan Latka

14:41Jeff, I have to tell you this respectfully. I asked this question because when I look at your pricing page, mean, this thing looks like shit. I'm so confused. I'm like, where do I go? There's so many sliders. What do I pay for? But this is working.

Jeff Lu

14:55So, yeah, I think we we we provide, one more tier. So before, we only provide Pro, Pro Max and Business. And, we just recently added a starter plan. So we kind of

15:10give people more options to get started. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:12So how many videos are you... Are are your users altogether free and paid creating per day on Akool today?

Jeff Lu

15:18About 500,000, I would say, per day. Images, videos, and all the assets created per day on Akool.

Funding: $10M Raised and $100M Valuation

Nathan Latka

15:24Is this bootstrapped, have you raised capital?

Jeff Lu

15:26We raised capital, but it's a small amount.

Nathan Latka

15:28When did you raise capital, and how little was it? What year?

Jeff Lu

15:31We raised in total about $10,000,000 across our last four plus years. And the last priced round is about two years ago, and we are working a new priced round and so on.

Nathan Latka

15:46Interesting. Are you comfortable sharing what that what that valuation was in 2024, the last priced round?

Jeff Lu

15:51Around a $100,000,000 two years ago. We haven't haven't really raised the priced round, but we take some SAFE notes at a much higher valuation. And we are thinking about a priced round.

Nathan Latka

16:04I mean, what's the market looking like today for valuations on companies growing as fast as yours? You're having conversations. I mean, do you think you can raise at a billion dollar valuation?

Jeff Lu

16:13So the market is constantly changing on the valuation side for the company. A billion may be a stretch, but I think probably like half of it or something like that. But a billion could be a little bit stretch on the current market. Yeah.

Would Jeff Sell to Google for $500M?

Nathan Latka

16:29If your old bosses at Google come back and say, Jeff, we want you back. Here's 500,000,000 all cash upfront. We wanna acquire Akool. Do you take the deal?

Jeff Lu

16:41Likely, I will.

The Next Technical Frontier for AI Video

Nathan Latka

16:44I love that you're honest. Most founders go, no, Nathan. Never. I wanna build this forever. And you're like, 500,000,000 cash up front. I'll take it. Alright. Well, Jeff, as we wrap up here, you look... You're a technologist by training. When you look at the technical side of pushing video creation forward, the next leap, what's the current bottleneck on the technical side?

Jeff Lu

17:05The videos are still pretty hard to create a long format and realistic videos and so on. How can we create one hour movie easily? And how can we make everyone able to create it? There's still some gaps over there. The foundation model technology is growing pretty fast. So I think pretty soon, people will be able to create very good movie quality videos by themselves.

Nathan Latka

17:34Guys, scientist from Google in 2022, he saw where video was going and said, I'm quitting Google. I'm going all in on my side project. Last month, which was June 2026, did $3,000,000 of total sales, and users are now creating over half of million videos and images per day on his platform. Jeff, thank you for taking us to the top. If you enjoyed that interview, you should click here to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss

17:56new interviews every Tuesday. If you've got some free time and wanna listen to the next interview right now, click right here. Lastly, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and here on YouTube.